Press Event

If this year's Mobile World Congress taught us one thing, it's that no matter how interesting and innovative the gadget makers and software developers of our global community are, it's the top brands that end up making or breaking the show. Make or break the show for the press, that is. Case in point: our several articles written from our chat with Google's Mathias Duarte - they ended up easily becoming some of the most popular posts we had this week, and Google didn't reveal any new products at the convention. In fact, they didn't have a stand - the chat we had wasn't even on the map. And yet, there it is - Google stole the show anyway.

What's this we have here? It looks to be an invitation from Facebook telling us to "come see a new look for News Feed." The event will take place next week on March 7 at 10 am PT. As for what the social network has in mind for the day's events, we're pretty adamant that they'll be introducing yet another new redesign of the front-page News Feed.

Augmented reality is going to be big, and Canon is jumping straight in with its MREAL System for Mixed Reality, a combination of a clever head-mounted display and integration with 3D graphics software to create a real-time virtual world you can interact with. Better known for its cameras, Canon is bringing that knowledge of lenses and optics to an innovative display system that blends the real world with computer graphics, using marker recognition so that physical objects can be picked out and manipulated in the digital environment. We caught up with Canon to try MREAL out, and see what you get for $125,000.

The FCC is typically pretty good at confirming new devices before they're officially revealed, and today it's doing just that. A listing for the 3G Nexus 7 has popped up on the FCC's website (as uncovered by The Digital Reader), which essentially confirms that it will be one of the devices Google announces during its Android event next Monday. In other words, get ready, because there should be a heaping helping of new Android devices revealed at the event.

We're live at Microsoft's big Windows 8 event in New York City, with the big talking point being the launch of the brand new OS. Microsoft's Steven Sinofaky is currently on stage, talking about the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8. The new OS goes live at 12:01 AM local time tomorrow morning around the world, and for consumers, the upgrade to the new version starts at $39.99.

If you were thinking about forgetting that the Galaxy Note II existed for one reason or another, the party happening tonight hosted by Samsung and starring no less than Kanye West is surely meant to change your mind. With the Samsung Galaxy Note II about to be available on several carriers across the United States and abroad, this week Samsung has brought on a media event blast normally reserved for a slightly less publicized event than this - ie a product announcement. Here though, it's all about keeping the thunder while Microsoft is in town.

It isn't exactly a secret anymore that Microsoft is holding a big Windows 8 launch event in New York tomorrow, and indeed, we'll be there covering the whole thing. If you want to follow along as we report the news, you're in luck (at least partially), as Microsoft will be live streaming its keynote from the event. The keynote is scheduled to kick of at 11:15 AM Eastern tomorrow, so be sure to write that down if you want to watch it live.

Apple has announced a brand new version of iBooks Author, and there's a few very important things to note. Starting today, iBooks Author comes with a bunch of new Apple templates, making textbook creation even easier. Publishers can also use their own fonts right there in their digital books, which should do something to give their books some personality that make them stand out.

Tim Cook is currently on stage at Apple's big event, but before he gets to revealing whatever today's focus is (cough iPad Mini cough), he's touting some of the company's latest numbers. We already heard about things like iOS 6 and Mountain Lion, but when it comes to the App Store, Cook had some impressive numbers to share. When Cook took the stage last more, he told the audience that there were 700,000 iOS apps on the App Store, 275,000 of which were iPad apps. Today, he says that both of those numbers are still growing.

The Apple event on the 23rd of October - next week, that is - is quite likely going to be playing host to more than just the iPad mini: in fact details today suggest that refreshes of both the Mac mini and iMac will be appearing at the event as well. This tip comes from 9to5Mac where they've got sources close to the line saying that three new Mac mini models will be appearing at the same prices the current models are at, that being $599, $799, and $999 - the last being a single server model. New iMac models are also being suggested to keep their pricing scale with $1199, $1499, $1699, and $1999 depending on the size and innards.